


Reason Never Knows

by surfgirl (verushka70)



Category: due South
Genre: Drama, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-11-07
Updated: 1999-11-07
Packaged: 2018-11-11 05:19:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11141799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verushka70/pseuds/surfgirl
Summary: Frannie considers her life and feelings for Fraser; he trusts her with a confidence.Spoilers, sort of, for Heaven and Earth, and minor references to the pilot, Mountie on then Bounty, Dead Guy Running, Pizzas and Promises, The Duel, The Deal, and Good For The Soul.





	Reason Never Knows

**Author's Note:**

> This story was once archived at [Due South Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Due_South_Archive). It has not been changed (nor will it be) on import to the AO3, except to more appropriately or descriptively tag, and to fix broken web links. Ever so grateful to [Open Doors](http://opendoors.transformativeworks.org/) and to [Speranza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Speranza/pseuds/Speranza), for making the archive import to AO3 happen. TYK!

Normally Frannie would have denied herself the little chocolate, but it had been a hard week, Ma was getting on her nerves, Fraser was as formal and distant as ever, and she was pre-menstrual. The desk sergeant offered her the open bag, while discussing self-basting turkeys with someone else on the phone. Frannie took a chocolate. She went back to her desk to enjoy it, hopefully without the phone ringing 

Once at her desk, she looked around the squad room. Fraser was there, in his heart-stopping, eye-catching red Serge. Today he and Ray were deeply involved in a fraud case, trying to trace the paper trail -- something she knew Ray was getting frustrated with and that Fraser was perfect for. He had the patience and stick-to-it-iveness with these kinds of tedious tasks, which Ray so completely lacked in his dislike for paperwork. Ray was bouncing a Nerf ball against the bulletin board by his desk, blond spikes quivering, while Fraser slowly read through an enormous pile of paper, page by page.

With affection she watched them talk, neither man looking at the other. The communication flowed between them easily. For all the friction that had been between them not long before, you'd never know now that they had had trouble with their partnership. It was almost a seamless exchange of ideas, banter, and speculation -- affectionate and with a mutual respect she longed to get from Fraser, but doubted she ever would.

At that thought, she turned away from them again, back to her computer, and opened the dark chocolate piece. Might as well savor it while she could. She looked around, but no one was paying attention to her, and no one looked ready to approach her with any work. Welsh wasn't in his office, so it was unlikely (she hoped) he'd come looking for her while the dark imported chocolate melted on her tongue.

The gold and red foil had a saying on the inside, she realized as she popped the chocolate in her mouth. She examined it.

"The heart has reasons which reason never knows."

Frannie closed her eyes. The chocolate was high quality, a high percentage of cocoa, like the best Italian chocolate: buttery, dark, semi-sweet. It began slowly dissolving between her tongue and palate. But for some reason what stuck with that sensation was the saying. _The heart has reasons which reason never knows._

Yes. Especially in her case. Fraser -- Mountie, RCMP, upstanding, polite, well-bred, well-read, well-spoken, chivalrous, kind, and manly -- her brain knew that it was unlikely he'd ever look twice at her with anything but a brotherly emotion in his heart. Heck, she only had to see how he'd been fawning over Constable Maggie Mackenzie, to know that she herself wasn't Fraser's type. But even if she'd never seen that, she still heard her brother's words ringing in her ears now and then.

"Guys like him don't marry girls like you. That's fairy tale. And girls like you get hurt, and guys like him don't even know it. And that's life."

The chocolate further dissolved, into a yummy liquid with a small lump inside it _. The heart has reasons which reason never knows_. Yes. She knew. She knew that she knew that Fraser would never be interested in a girl like herself.

But it didn't stop her heart from yearning for Fraser.

She heard the chaos of the squad room around her, felt the crinkly foil in her hand, the hardness of her chair under her butt, the unflattering, unbreathing warmth of her poly-cotton civilian aide uniform shirt and (worse) pants.

The heart has reasons. Yes, her heart had plenty of reasons. Gino was -- was a mistake. She should never have married him. She thought she would just do like Maria -- marry her high school sweetheart, settle down, have some kids. Give Ma some more grandkids. 

But it didn't work out that way. For one thing, she didn't get pregnant. She didn't know why. The doctor said she was fine. For another thing, Gino was a lot like her dad. Too much like her dad. Might as well have been a younger, cuter carbon copy of her dad. He sure hadn't seemed that way when they were dating... but by the time they'd been married six months, she was depressingly aware how much like Dad he was.

For one thing, he stayed out late. For another, he blew their money like water when he was liquored up and feeling lucky at the bar. For him it was darts, instead of pool like Dad; but the result was the same. He thought he was a shark. He'd start playing and winning money. And then he'd be out all night on his winnings, crawling home at the crack of dawn with lipstick on his collar, and asking her two hours later to call in for him at his job at the convention center. 

Pretty soon he was coming home with lipstick on his collar and little bits of white dust by the corners of his nostrils. And when he came home earlier, or didn't go out at all, he was too tired for cuddling and they'd get weird hang-up phone calls in the evenings. When she could cajole him into it, he'd cuddle up with her and get amorous. But either he couldn't get it up, or he could, but then he couldn't finish. And she'd be raw and frustrated with him sawing at her insensitively, like that was supposed to feel good. Until they finally gave up and lay on their backs, side by side, looking at the ceiling and not talking. 

And so it wasn't long before Gino lost his job, and Frannie had to get a job at Leona's, the one on Augusta. And Gino was out 'til all hours. And when he wasn't, he was snoozing on the couch. And the girls at Teresa's beauty salon would eye her knowingly when she came in for her manicure, and say nothing about Gino but carefully talked about anything else. And sooner or later it became apparent that they knew -- the whole neighborhood knew -- what had taken her all that time to figure out. That Gino was again (or still?) seeing his little blond white trash hillbilly girlfriend Denise in Uptown, the girl he'd met for that short time when she and Gino had been broken up a couple years before.

And so, ten months of no-fault divorce proceedings and nine hundred and forty seven dollars she hadn't had later, she was back at home at Ma's, suffering Maria's self-righteous attitude when her husband Tony seemed cut from the same cloth as Dad or Gino... another lazy bum who didn't work. At least she, Frannie, had moved home because she had _no_ husband. Maria had a husband and he couldn't even provide for her and the two kids!

But it didn't matter. In Frannie's mind, she was a failure -- because she was a failure in Maria's and her mother's eyes. She went out with a few of the neighborhood guys, less to go out with them than to make sure she wasn't home alone with the family on Friday and Saturday nights, watching Tony and Maria be their happy little dysfunctional couple, and watching Ma's lips move while she read. Nothing remarkable happened, except with Guy Rankin, the swine who tried to force himself on her, who Ray had threatened.

She had no idea what to do with herself. Leona's had cut her hours too, so she had more free time than before, and the hours just gave her more time to brood. On the one hand, Gino was a stupid bastard who deserved to be dumped. But sometimes -- and she hated herself for thinking this, but she guiltily thought it anyway -- sometimes she wished with all her might that she was still married to him, still living with him, still sharing his bed. Even if they didn't do anything in it, even if he was just a solid, hairy heat provider, a warm body beside hers.

It beat sleeping alone in her mother's house. Especially since she began to wonder and worry that she would be sleeping alone in her mother's house for the rest of her life because she'd screwed up her one chance. At least, that was what she sometimes thought. And spent a lot of time trying _not_ to think.

And then one day, Ray brought a friend home for dinner. 

And Frannie just knew -- knew Fraser was the one for her.

Problem was, despite her best efforts, Fraser didn't realize it himself.

She knew she had an uphill battle ahead of her, but she figured she could use her feminine wiles, and what she didn't know she could learn from Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Mademoiselle.

Sometimes the stuff she read embarrassed her. But she diligently read all the articles on how a man likes to be touched, what men want but won't ask for, how to blow your man's mind, how to get and keep his attention, how to interest him in getting to know you better. She figured that _after_ she'd gotten and kept his attention, then she could work on sexually enslaving him with her amorous skills. 

But every one of the attention getting, flirting bits of advice that she tried sailed right over Fraser's head. One by one. Not to mention his embarrassing responses to her direct approaches in the church choir and at his house one night in the teddy from the local lingerie shop. She couldn't even talk about the Iditarod with him when she'd tried to talk to him about _his_ interests. She always felt like she needed an encyclopedia just to have a conversation with him. 

Then her brother left on the undercover job. Ma wanted to be kept informed about Ray's whereabouts, but Frannie tried to explain to her that they _couldn't_ be kept informed, because the whole thing was a secret. Finally she gave up, and came in to the squad room one day to ask Elaine what they were and were not allowed to know. 

And, strangely enough, some officer assumed she worked there when Elaine stepped away, and asked her something. And she wrote down what he wanted to know and his name. Then she looked through the papers on Elaine's desk, and at the spines of the directories on the shelf nearby. And by the time Elaine was back, she'd found the info herself. She'd always been resourceful.

Elaine suggested she apply for the civilian aide job that would be vacant when Elaine graduated from the Academy. And, not having anything better to do, and seeing this as a way to stay informed about Ray and in an area which might be more impressive (and accessible) to Fraser, Frannie figured it was a better idea than anything else that had popped up recently. And she wasn't doing anything else.

And when Elaine graduated, and Francesca got her job, Frannie got to see much, much more of Fraser. Though he didn't seem to think any more of her than he did before -- polite, distant interest and a brotherly care for her that she assumed had only increased because her brother had asked Fraser to watch out for his family while he was gone.

The chocolate was completely dissolved in her mouth now, and she swallowed the delicious elixir of liquid. PMS, for all its bad points, was a great excuse to indulge in this once in a while.

"Francesca, I wonder if you could--" came Fraser's voice, clear and close.

She almost fell off the chair with a start, tipping backwards. Her eyes sprang open and she gripped the edge of the desk, dropping the foil wrapper of her chocolate.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, Francesca, I didn't mean to startle you--"

"Nah, nah, it's, um, it's okay, Frayzh," she stammered.

He bent to pick up the foil wrapper and handed it to her.

"Mustn't litter," he said, giving her that small, polite, million-miles-away smile.

"I wouldn't," she said seriously. Fraser always made her want to be a better person, even though she wasn't always sure in what ways. All the ways he would have wanted her to, she guessed -- _if_ he had wanted her to.

She put the wrapper on her desk, because she wanted to save it. She tucked the top edge of it under the bottom edge of her computer keyboard.

"Now, Francesca, Ray and I are looking for any and all not-for-profit agencies involved with this charity headed by a Mr. Charles Whittaker..."

She busied herself with entering the name and vitals into the database, trying to pull up city tax records and registered not-for-profits, all the while enjoying Fraser's nearness, even as she paid attention to what she was doing. She would never have thought she could do this kind of work, but, when you got right down to it, it wasn't that different than waitressing. Everybody had a different order they wanted cooked a certain way, and you just had to remember which one went to who and when they needed it, and if they had any special requests, like no pine nuts, or "sauce on the side". Only with these guys, it was information about suspects and criminals and little nitpicky details like known associates, rap sheets, and last known whereabouts.

The few registered not-for-profits connected to Mr. Whittaker came up, and she found the FEIN number for each. Fraser wanted two copies of each, one for him and one for Ray; but her printer was acting flaky and crunching some of the printouts into an accordian-shape. So she printed one copy of each and left for the copier machine to make the extra copies. 

She came back around the corner a few minutes later, cheerfully ready to hand Fraser the copies of the papers he'd requested. 

And he was sitting there, in his red Serge uniform, sticking out like a sore thumb no one was noticing in this office of blue and black. And he had a forefinger on the edge of the foil wrapper of her chocolate that she'd tucked part-way under the keyboard's bottom edge. 

And he was staring at it with one of the most dark, wistful, and sad expressions she'd ever seen on his face. Worse even than he'd looked the night Warfield's goons worked him over.

She stopped in front of her desk, unsure what to say. He looked up at her quickly, trying to compose his face into a neutral, superficially cheerful expression, and failing completely.

"What's wrong, Frayzh?" she asked gently. She handed him the papers over the computer monitor.

He stumbled to his feet. "Nothing, ah -- n-nothing, Francesca. I just--"

"You read the chocolate wrapper," she murmured, embarrassed. She looked down, internally shaking her head. Time for another hasty retreat from Fraser.

"Yes, I, I..." She looked up guiltily, to see him running the thumbnail over his eyebrow like he did when he was nervous. "It's..." he paused and collected himself. "It's very true," he finished quietly, looking away from her and stepping out from behind her desk.

She edged around him and sat down, and picked up the wrapper. Opening her desk drawer, she tucked it in under the business cards for the general information number for the 27th precinct, trying to erase the pointless hope from her face before looking up. He wouldn't be thinking of her; he couldn't be thinking of her; but she knew he must have been thinking about _someone_ for that saying on the wrapper to have affected him so much.

She pushed her chair farther back from the aisle, backing away from Fraser a bit. 

But when she looked up again, his face had that stricken look on it again. Only it was directed across the room now.

Francesca turned to look over her right shoulder, following his gaze... To Ray Kowalski, grinning and chatting on the phone with someone. She looked back at Fraser's face, a growing sense of confusion and then understanding seizing her voice and stilling it.

The Mountie looked down at her upturned face, her liquid brown eyes. Hope turned to confusion, turned to dawning recognition in her expression. Her lips parted in a soundless, surprised gasp.

He tried to hide his obvious sadness behind a polite smile. This, too, failed utterly. He settled for looking down at her, recognizing in her face the longing -- for him -- that he knew must show in his face, for Ray. 

"The heart has reasons which reason never knows," he said quietly, meeting her eyes.

The seriousness of his look and what he'd said left her speechless. She simply looked up at him, a bit stunned, unsure if the shock was from what she'd come to understand in the last thirty seconds, or if it was from Fraser's unprecedented candor and trust in her.

And then she swallowed, never breaking his gaze, and nodded silently, her eyes promising to keep between them what she now knew to be true of Fraser.

"Thank you, Francesca," Fraser said, with a suggestion of a bow, and a shake of the papers in his hand, as if he were thanking her for her work well-done on the not-for-profit research. 

But the meaningful look of his blue blue eyes on hers, with sad wrinkles at the corners she'd never noticed before, told her what he was really thanking her for.

 

 

 

 

end

 

 

 

© 1999 Surfgirl 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Note: the original quote is from Blaise Pascal (thanks to Maxine for attributing it to the correct source). I got it off a Dove Silks chocolate wrapper, but I was pretty sure it wasn't Dove's original creation. The Dove (and Pascal) versions end "which reason does not know". I changed it slightly to "reason never knows".


End file.
